That would be like trying to determine the contents of a vacuum bottle.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/11/jury-newegg-infringes-spangenberg-patent-must-pay-2-3-million/?comments=1&post=25764027

Though in that post I wrote that the patent was likely valid but that the verdict of infringement was wrong, that may not actually be the case. Though the SSL/TLS specification itself does not directly read on the patent, the renegotiation handshake that can be used to generated new keys does have some implementations that work at least in part in the way the patent describes:

http://pic.dhe.ibm.com/infocenter/wmqv7/v7r1/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.ibm.mq.doc%2Fsy11000_.htm

“Renegotiate Period” in:
https://devcentral.f5.com/articles/ssl-profiles-part-6-ssl-renegotiation#.Up7kNpH-jzN

Remember that the patent claims are about changing the encryption keys after a predetermined number of blocks (amount of data transmitted/received) and generating such keys using synchronized pseudo-random numbers generators so that one need not transmit such keys. Though the patent was about creating new keys for block ciphers, the claims are broadly written so that they can apply to changing the seed key for stream ciphers as well.

If you actually look at the textbook the defense claimed was prior art (Denning’s “Cryptography and Data Security”):

http://faculty.nps.edu/dedennin/publications/Denning-CryptographyDataSecurity.pdf

you will find that it only references changing keys with regard to stream patents where the keys change for every bit (if XOR is used from bits in the key stream against bits in the plaintext) and where different keys can be used for different records in a database. It does not talk about different keys for different blocks in a block cipher nor about changing the seed key for a stream cipher nor about generating such keys at both ends using synchronized pseudo-random number generators so that transmission of the changed keys is not needed.

Diffie’s testimony made it sound like RC4 was claimed to be prior art at the same time it was claimed to not infringe the patent — you can’t have it both ways and in reality RC4 has nothing to do with the patent so couldn’t be prior art against it.

From what I can tell, secret key renegotiation exchanges (transmits) the generated keys which is something that would not be needed if the keys were generated as proposed by the patent, but if such keys were generated by synchronized pseudo-random number generators and the transmission was superfluous, then that would still be infringement. At a minimum, it sounds like a gray area.

I’m going to be getting a copy of part of the court transcript and do further research on this — what the press and people posting comments about this say is obviously not the real story. There is so much hyperbole from both sides.

I suspect the word in out amongst to good people of Marshall that finding for the plaintiff will continue the largesse of legal tourism, and not to worry for truth and justice because our foolish findings will be dealt with on appeal.

The lawyers from both teams took in the verdict without emotion and shook hands following the verdict.

Of course, in any lawsuit they are always the winners.

Which isn’t true at all. The Patent Office does very little due diligence in determining whether a patent is novel or unique. It is very very possible that the Government issued, especially in software/tech, patents that are invalid on their face.

Inventor (US Patent # 5,212,540)